Question 10264 — foreign policy

Summary

Mr. Laurent Mazaury draws the attention of the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs to attacks on Tibetan culture and language in Tibet. The Chinese authorities recently decided that Tibetan would no longer be a compulsory subject for the national entrance exam to the University of Tibet from 2026. This is an additional attack against the Tibetan language, which for several years has been attacked by the Chinese government. In 2023, UN experts were already concerned about Chinese policies against Tibetans and their cultural heritage, denouncing their forced assimilation, in particular through the placement of children in boarding schools. The same year, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the abduction of Tibetan children and forced assimilation practices in Chinese boarding schools in Tibet. According to sociologist Gyal Lo, Chinese became the only language of instruction, with Tibetan representing only three-quarters of an hour of instruction over an eight-hour day. Tibetan children are required from the age of 4 to go to a boarding school. 90% of them are now distant from their families geographically, but also culturally. When they return home, sometimes after several months of absence for nomadic families, communication is broken because children and parents no longer speak the same language. According to Mr. Gyal Lo, if this policy is maintained, 70% of Tibetans will no longer be able to speak their language in 2060. Parents have no choice but to put their children in these boarding schools: other school options (public schools, teaching centers in monasteries) are closed and, if they do not accept boarding in kindergarten, they are threatened with not being able to enroll their children in school and their social assistance will be withdrawn. While Tibetan culture has existed for several millennia, it has been under attack by the Chinese Government for years and measures against it are intensifying. Furthermore, it seems that this policy has strong repercussions on the success of Tibetan students, because they must learn the different subjects of the school curriculum in a language which is not their mother tongue. Also, the risk of dropping out of school and taking low-skilled jobs is greater for the Tibetan community. It is possible that this policy participates in another developed by the Chinese authorities to meet the labor needs of China which, since 2020, has carried out massive transfers of nomads and farmers Tibetans in businesses. In this context, he asks what measures he intends to take to carry France's voice within the European Union and international bodies to defend Tibetan culture and language and China's respect for international obligations, in particular the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which it has ratified.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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